Is consciousness just an illusion?

[Tom McCurdy]

Let me first say I am not sure where to place this, but I thought General Physics was alright but feel free to move it where it should go.

The scientific proof of the existence of the soul (and God)

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In the following site I analyse the incongruencies of the materialistic conception of the mind, on the basis of our present scientific knowledges about brain and matter.
This analysis points out how the laws of physics prove that the brain cannot generate consciousness, which existence implies the presence in man of a unbiological/unmaterial element. The problem of consciousness is then strictly connected to the one of the existence of the soul and, consequently, the existence of God.

http://members.xoom.virgilio.it/fed.../englishnf.html

Let's discuss my arguments here.

Marco Biagini

Ph.D in Solid State Physics

I was hoping that someone would critique his argument ...

I refuse to believe that his research results in what he says it does.

thx -
tom

 

[Doc Al]

That link doesn't work (perhaps you pasted it incorrectly?), so we can't check out his argument, though I'm sure it's a doozie.

In any case, I'll move this to Gen Philosophy.

 

[Political Prodigy]

An interesting concept he has, but since the site is apparently inoppurable at the time we can't really discus it

 

[Tom McCurdy]

Alright here we go

http://members.xoom.virgilio.it/fedeescienza/englishnf.html
that should work now

 

[loseyourname]

Wow, this guy seems to have almost no idea what he's talking about.

Every materialistic attempt to explain the existence of consciousness implies that what suffers, loves, desires, feels etc. in us are objects such as electrons or electromagnetic fields. The point is that objects can feel nothing at all; objects cannot feel happiness, sadness, love, anger,self-awareness, etc. Science has proved that the equations of the electromagnetic field are universal; they describe the electromagnetic field within our brain as well as within a copper wire or an atom. There is no trace of consciousness, sensations, emotions, etc. in the equations of physics. These equations do not explain the existence of consciousness and our capacity to feel. If one hypothesizes that the electromagnetic fields are responsible of our sensations, emotions and thoughts, the only logical conclusion would be that also our television, our washing machine, etc. sometimes would be happy or depressed.

That's a bit like saying because electrical impulses are responsible for the movements of our legs, that washing machines should be able to run, so electrical impulses can't be responsible for the movement of our legs. Geez. This guy is completely ignoring the relevance of organization of particles and the resulting emergent traits of groups of particles. Washing machines and televisions perform different functions not because they're made of different particles, but because the particles they are made of are arranged differently.

To ascribe to the electrons in our brain the property to generate consciousness, and not to ascribe the same property to the electrons moving in a bulb, is in contradiction with one of the fundamental principle of physics, the Pauli Exclusion Principle, which establishes that all electrons are equal and indistinguishable, that is they have all exactly the same properties.

The Pauli Exclusion Principle states that no two particles of half-integer spin within a single atom can have the same quantum numbers. What the heck is this guy talking about?

On the other hand, consciousness transcends the laws of physics and cannot then be considered the product of biological and cerebral processes.

He might very well be right about this, but he certainly has no way to be as sure as he seems to think he is. If it was that cut and dry that consciousness is contracausal, then we wouldn't have much of a debate, would we?

A phenomenological theory is only an approximated and simplified version of a first-principle theory, that represents the exact explanation of natural phenomena. Biology and neurology are examples of phenomenological theories, while physics is the only first-principle theory, from which all the other natural sciences derive. Of course, since first principle calculations are very lengthy and arduous, we need also simplified theories in order to treat more easily systems formed by many atoms.

It might be pointed out that QED is the closest thing we currently have to a "first-principle" theory and that even the rest of physics is ultimately derived from it. If we discover the TOE, then that will become the only "first-principle" theory. There is no reason here to assign any heightened importance to all of physics.

We do not know yet the exact successions of chemical reactions occurring in all biological processes, and biology has the task to discover these successions; however, exactly as in the case of the combination lock, the laws of physics establish that no successions of chemical reactions can generate consciousness, sensations, emotions or thoughts. Hence, a non-physical element (the soul) must exist as the source of our consciousness and our psychical life.

I would like to see the law of physics that states consciousness cannot possibly be generated from successions of chemical reactions. He again seems to be denying that any emergent properties exist, which clearly is not true.

The laws generating all chemical, biological, neurological processes are now perfectly known.

Well, unless he uncovered the TOE and neglected to tell, this simply isn't true.

Today we are able to do first-principle calculations for molecular systems formed by many atoms; this means that we can calculate the solutions of the equations of quantum physics also for macroscopic systems. The point is that we already know what KIND of information we can get from a first-principle calculation for every possible molecular system. In fact from the solution of the Schroedinger equation for a molecular system we know that we can obtain information such as charge distributions or energy spectra. By no means we can obtain consciousness, emotions, feelings, etc. These are not possible outputs of a first-principle calculation. Even if we had a supercomputer with the capacity to find the wave function for our brain, we could find from the wave function only properties such as charge density or energy spectra.

Well now Mister, you couldn't generate language, gender, culture, the final scores of college football games, and a score of other things that without question have a physical origin. The fact that he thinks this is somehow of significance is laughable.

 

[Tom McCurdy]

Hahaha thank you for your analysis

 

[anti_crank]

Excellent work. It seems I do not need to add anything here, which is just as well, since I have little time to spare for PF for the moment.

 

[loseyourname]

I found a little snippet from a book last night that is particularly relevant to this topic:

• The fundamental principle is deadly simply, but at the same time almost endlessly versatile. Increased complexity will essentially be a matter of adding components of the same basic type; the neurons in a flatworm and the neurons in a human brain work on the same fundamental principles. From which it does not follow, however, that the capacities of the human brain are essentially just those of a densely packed conglomeration of flatworm ganglia. The marvelous thing about electrical circuits is that adding components is not merely a matter of enlarging the system, but sometimes means changing the systems's capacities in novel and remarkable ways. In particular, the evolutionary step that interposes neurons between sensory neurons and motor neurons is revolutionary: it permits the building-in of a basic world-representation, and it can provide for increasingly fancy updating of that world-representation through learning. As the interneuron pool proliferates under evolutionary pressure for more competitive sensorimotor coordination, the innate world-representation improves and the dimensions of plasticitiy ramify.

Neurophilosophy, Patricia Smith Churchland

 

[Wave's_Hand_Particle]

Let me first say I am not sure where to place this, but I thought General Physics was alright but feel free to move it where it should go.



I was hoping that someone would critique his argument ...

I refuse to believe that his research results in what he says it does.

thx -
tom

There can be no doubt that consciousness is widespread throughout 'all' living things. Just what level of consciousness exists within the brain of a Dolphin for instance?..the brain size and construction are very similar to Human brain make-up. Just what a Dolphin make's of say..the Physics Forum I do not know

I have seen documented evidence of Dolphins being video taped live, and their images sent to an underwater Television monitor. The Dolphins appeared to recocnize each other upon the monitor( monitor was below water at one end of the pool, and camera was one the surface at the other). The Dolphins actually took it in turns to go and look into the camera, whilst the rest of them watched TV!

I do not foresee the day just yet, that Dolphins start ordering TV dinners!

I think conscious awareness is ill defined. Soul awareness can be attributted to the self through 'ego' and there is evidence that one's ego can invoke an higher opinion of worth, above others?

I am not saying that 'souls' do not exist, there is lots of evidence, that lots of people subscribe to this line of thought, it exists in the mind of those who prefer certain answers to certain questions?

 

[Tom McCurdy]

...to save people some time the proof goes like this: "science cannot explain consciousness, therefore there must be a soul". Oh yeah, also all animals are biological robots.

I'm afraid no amount of wishful thinking can turn Pinocchio into a real boy...

This was a reply from the other site

 

[Doc Al]

Argument from Consciousness

This argument for god, often referred to as the "Argument from Consciousness", is nothing new. It's a variant of the argument from ignorance (science can't explain X, thus god).

Here's an article dismantling it: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/steven_conifer/ac.html

 

[Wave's_Hand_Particle]

This argument for god, often referred to as the "Argument from Consciousness", is nothing new. It's a variant of the argument from ignorance (science can't explain X, thus god).

Here's an article dismantling it: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/steven_conifer/ac.html

Of course Science and Scientists are vunerable to conjecture?..take String theory and apply the question:Do Strings exist? ...one can imagine scientists turning to God or a Monkey for such an answer!

I told a group of Postgrads, who were at my Uni for lectures by Ed Witten this in the mid nineties

 

[franznietzsche]

This guy should never have been awarded a PhD. loseyourname pretty much covered and when you get down to it, he's steeped in bad science, and has forgotten the basics of scientific thought. And i mean the basics like:

1)If you don't know the answer, then you just don't know it. Thats ok.
2)Just because we don't have an answer doesn't mean any answer can be substituted in its place.

 

[fomenkoa]

No proof

There is no trace of consciousness, sensations, emotions, etc. in the equations of physics. These equations do not explain the existence of consciousness and our capacity to feel

Just reading that made me not want to read the rest. The guy is not PROVING anything, he simply states a bunch of untrue statements and adds scientific terms to them to made them seem like proofs

 

[hypnagogue]

In addition to the critiques already mentioned here, we can add a more philosophical critique. The author does not seem to appreciate the problem of other minds.

I can be sure that I am conscious, but my certainty ends there. I make a reasonable assumption that other humans are conscious, but no matter how reasonable, this is still an assumption; I cannot leap into other people's minds and verify that they are conscious as well. I can also make an an assumption that a television is not conscious, but no matter how apparently reasonable, this too is an assumption. For all I know, a television very well might have some sort of consciousness; I certainly have no resources to definitively say one way or the other, and so must rely on my highly biased vantage point as a human being to try to make what appears to be a reasonable assumption. But the author takes such an assertion to be true and, crucially, subsequently uses it for the purpose of a reductio ab absurdum to demonstrate his premise that something like electrons cannot be responsible for consciousness. Essentially, his argument relies on the notion that we can already be certain what physical systems are and are not conscious, which is certainly not the case.

 

[fomenkoa]

But, does it really matter if something is "conscious" or not?

Does consciousness even exist? Sure, we think and we KNOW that we think so we give it a name "consciousness"

But it just might be an illusion caused by our complex brains...that's what I believe anyway

Anton